Ann Townsend was born in Pittsburgh, raised in Pennsylvania and New Orleans, and earned her BA from Denison University and her MA and PhD in English literature from The Ohio State University. Townsend’s work fuses pastoral, domestic, and metaphysical concerns in verse that is often described as formally subtle and acute. She has cited Andrew Marvell, James Thomson, and John Clare as major influences. Townsend’s collections of poetry include Dime Store Erotics (1998) and The Coronary Garden (2005). With her husband, the writer and scholar David Baker, she edited Radiant Lyre: Essays on Lyric Poetry (2007) and released the chapbook Holding Katherine (1996). She has written two additional chapbooks, Modern Love (1995) and The Braille Woods (1997).
After our love, I lie in the shadow of your shoulder
and drift to the sound of the seventeen-year locusts outside,
their lonely tenor buzz that rises and falls together
and as suddenly stops, and flares out again.
...
What a fine package
you've come wrapped in.
A swathing of hospital cotton,
...
I'm looking at the intersection
of thigh and cloth,
oh at you,
where, caught in sunlight,
...
he called me twice, filled the line
with his particular human sound,
irritating, yes, and meaningless
...